Happy 5th Anniversary Firestorm

Today marks Firestorm’s 5th anniversary celebrations and there is a huge party happening now to celebrate the amazing success over the past 5 years. There are around 140+ avatars over at the Firestorm regions having a great time and the party goes on until late evening (SLT) today.

Join us today as we celebrate crossing into our 5th year of providing the most popular viewer in Second Life and virtual worlds! Five years we’ve been together as a team developing and supporting first the Phoenix Viewer and then the Firestorm Viewer used in Second Life and on other grids. It is a testament to the character of each individual on the team as they have all donated their time on a volunteer basis to provide the best experience possible for our end users.

Firestorm is still one of the most popular viewers in Second Life and continues to offer great service to the end-user. At the party you will find awesome collectible gifts such as KittyCats, Fennux Breedables and Desert Morning Motors.

Community Gateways Are Returning

The Community Gateway programme is set to return to Second Life and this is really exciting news to hear that it’s coming back. The programme was stopped back in August 2010 which allowed communities help new users go through their own orientation systems.

At the end of July Inara Pey talked with Patch Linden about Community Gateways and there is good news from this discussion. According to Patch Linden the lab will be bringing back Community Gateways as a test to start of with then it may become more mainstream after that. This will be based on the positive feedback received and there are 20 gateways currently in discussions. At the moment the lab wants to take an organic approach to re-establishing things.

The plan is to allow gateway creators to help bring in users and for new registrant would begin their time in Second Life in the experience that matches their interest instead of Learning Island. It’s not yet ready for launch but the lab will be announcing more details about this in the near future.

Firestorm Team invited

The Firestorm team has been invited to the new Community Gateways programme and there will be five regions with the new user experience on them. The grand opening will be happening soon as the regions are currently under construction.

Firestorm will be revamping their website soon to allow for it to be linked with the Second Life new user registration process. New users will be able to sign up to Second Life and log into the Firestorm new user experience from the Firestorm website.

The new user experience will be including an airport for flying, water space with boats and an underwater scuba adventure area. A sandbox for building, a social area to hang out, an amphitheater and a Q&A event area with much more planned.